Pharmaceutical products, including both prescription and over-the-counter pharmaceutical products, while useful for improving health of a person in need, are also susceptible to intentional and unintentional abuse and overdosing. Examples of commonly abused active pharmaceutical ingredients include psychoactive drugs, anxiolytics, sedative hypnotics, stimulants, depressants, and analgesics such as narcotic analgesics, among others. A complete list of specific drug compounds that are commonly abused would be lengthy; a short listing of some classes of drugs commonly abused includes opioids and morphine derivatives, barbiturates, amphetamines, ketamine, and other drugs that can cause psychological or physical dependence.
Some common techniques for intentionally abusing a drug begin with an abuser obtaining a solid dosage form such as an orally administered tablet or capsule, and crushing the solid dosage form into a powder. The powder may be administered by an abuser by nasal insufflation (i.e., “snorting”) to introduce the drug to the abuser's bloodstream intranasally. Alternately, the crushed dosage form may be combined with a solvent that is capable of dissolving the drug (active pharmaceutical ingredient, or “API”), and the solvent with the dissolved drug may be injected directly into an abuser's bloodstream.
Alternatively, with immediate release oral dosage forms, an abuser might simply ingest multiple units (e.g., tablets) of the dosage form together, e.g., simultaneously. Each one of the multiple dosage form units—immediately releases an amount of drug to produce a short-term concentration spike of the drug in the user's bloodstream and a desired “high” in the user.
The pharmaceutical industry has identified various mechanisms of adapting drug compositions and oral dosage forms that can be useful to discourage abuse of oral dosage forms. Pharmaceutical companies have studied dosage forms that contain a nasal irritant or an effervescent agent, which can cause irritation or pain in a nasal passage if the dosage form is crushed and then snorted, thus discouraging abuse by nasal insufflation. Pharmaceutical companies studied adding gelling polymers to dosage forms to prevent abuse by injection. If the dosage form is crushed to a powder and combined with a small amount of solvent, the gelling polymer can cause the combination to take the form of a highly viscous liquid or gel that cannot be administered by injection. Another possible abuse deterrent may be addition of an emetic agent which can deter abuse by causing emesis on ingestion of multiple doses. Another abuse deterrent involves adding an antagonist of an API to a dosage form that will substantially block the effect of the drug.
Although the pharmaceutical industry has identified of a variety of abuse deterrent (sometimes referred to as “abuse-resistant”) features useful with oral dosage forms, there is continuing need to improve and identify new abuse deterrent features to inhibit or prevent abuse or overdosing of active pharmaceutical ingredients.